So I walked over to the student union building on campus yesterday to help a student set up for a video interview. And I was completely surprised by something.
On the second floor of the SUB there is a huge open room where they hold events and such. In the corner where the room they were going to use was reserved was a grand piano. And no, this wasn’t the surprise.
Students can just walk up and start tickling the ivories anytime they want to. I think that its pretty cool. Nope, not the surprise either.
Anyway, as I was walking away from the reserved room to go downstairs for a snack a student was playing the piano, quiet beautifully actually.
What stopped me in my tracks is that instead of using a play book or sheet music to learn the song, he had a laptop where the sheet music would have gone and was learning from a YouTube video.
I talked with him briefly and he said that when he was in high school he played the tenor saxophone. But he really wanted to continue being musically active (well thats a summation there) and that reading the bass notes of piano music just didn’t work with his brain.
I can totally relate. Growing up my parents had both my brother and I take piano lessons. It’s one of the childhood rites of passage. Anyway I remember her saying “if I could get your brother to play the bass notes and you to play the treble, then you guys could play the piano with both hands.”
For the record, he went on to play the trombone and I the alto, bass and soprano saxophones. Too funny.
Back to the story: So anyway since reading and feeling comfortable about reading sheet music was an obstacle, a friend recommended to this student to go to YouTube and visually learn how to play the piano.
I don’t want to get into a discussion about the pro’s and con’s about how rich of an education he is giving himself, but it was a joy to listen to him play.
